Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Concept Art – Behind the Scenes

The role of a Concept Artist is the role of an explorer,
tasked with charting a world without sunlight. Bear with me here:

You start off with your reference and research. These are
well established base camps. They’re well lit, highly populated and safe. The
better your reference the better your bearings will be. The artist’s job is to
start at base camp with a bag of torches and run furiously out into the
darkness. Every doodle, sketch, painting and storyboard is a torch lit
somewhere out in the black. You mostly find weeds and rocks out there. But if
you keep pushing you sometimes find a rich landscape that can hopefully become
a new basecamp.

I was inspired by my friend Hethe Srodawa, who recently
posted his most nitty-gritty of concept work: his paintovers (http://hethesrodawa.blogspot.ca/2013/05/local-watering-hole_21.html).
We can tend to keep our less pretty, less refined work hidden away on our
drives but I think it paints a disingenuous image of the role of concept
artists. There’s a lot more to the job than the few polished portfolio pieces
that get released. Hethe pulled his pants down and it has inspired me to do the
same.

What follows is a smattering of rag-tag concepts.
Some saw
the light of day, some were changed dramatically, some were scrapped entirely.

All were necessary.

Mass Effect

This was a very, very early idea for Shepard. In this image
he has been forced to turn to Reaper technology to accomplish his goals
(*cough* Saren *cough*) and he’s being confronted by the new human Specter,
Ashley.

When designing the Cerberus troops, there were a lot of
requests for thickness. I tend to go thin by default (a handicap I have to
constantly work to counteract). What I wanted to maintain was a slight
“goofiness” to their appearance. I think that if you try to design something to
be cool, it will fail. The best designs (especially designs for characters that
are meant to be scary or intimidating) are ones that maintain a percentage of
goofiness. Real world designs typically have this element because engineers and
designers are concerned with function first. This tends to create unintentionally
funny forms.

Bubblehead here was meant to be the ultimate stress test for
this concept. He would show up looking like an idiot, but once he murdered a
prisoner in cold blood and then ripped your health down to nothing you would
learn to fear that stupid looking shape. I believe that the juxtaposition
between the goofy appearance and deadly menace creates an iconic, lasting
enemy. That said, it still wasn’t an idea that fit within the Mass Effect
language.

Two early takes on Kai Leng. Playing with Ben Huen’s idea
for robot legs, and a battle scarred version. The scarred version was an
attempt to create an evil Shepard (As though Cerberus had rebuilt him as well,
but done a crappier job).

Here were two early renditions of the Illusive man after he
had overdosed on Reaper Tech.

This was an early take on Ashley’s costume. The idea was to
create a hybrid of uniform and armor. I’ve always been fond of the idea of
futuristic wet-suit armor. I wanted to try a suit that was flexible, but sturdy
and protective. Flexible, futuristic armor is a concept that requires too much
in-game exposition though. At the end of the day it was decided that players
need to see hard-shell armor.

This was an aborted painting of Jack escaping from
prison. I’m pretty sure it was abandoned
because the level was already looking and playing great, so it wouldn’t be of
much use to anyone.

The same goes for this Legion image. By the time is was
started, it wasn’t needed.

Here’s a version of Wrex on his throne that was never
released. It was drawn to help give the level artists a starting point.

The Collector ship and the Human-Reaper both took a very
long time to design. This biggest challenge was communicating the immense
scale. These concepts were all part of the long discussion about scale, but
also how abstracted the Human-Reaper would be. Early experiments leant more
towards a fetus, others towards adult skeletal and muscular systems.

This one in particular was far too literal. I include it
because the human-tube has been a long running and terrible joke between a few
friends. Just imagine the deafening squeak of a thousand asses rubbing on
glass.

An unused alien idea. Thank god. I wanted to design an
alien that was completely horrifying and was failing in every possible way to
come across as relatable to humans. If we actually went this direction I would
have loved it if you could see constantly shifting eyes and teeth behind his
“Hue-Mon” mask. Just awful.

Early passes at the Shadowbroker.

This one is my personal favorite. I kind of wish we’d
gone this direction, even though admittedly it's a bit more boring that the final version. This was a response to the description “He’s basically
Ares, in space.”

This was a quick idea for the interior of a Turian
structure. It was cobbled together from photos of abandoned planes.

This was a sketch to try to describe the look of Reaper infection
inside the Geth system.

Edi went through a lot of quick, early iterations. When you
know a character is going to be a particular challenge it can help to explore a
lot of territory quickly and early. We tried:

Plastic-skin,
with and without glowy-bits.

A more literal avatar of the Normandy.

A love letter to Blade Runner’s Pris.

Mechanical manequins, attempting to own the uncanny valley
by creating a disquieting look.

I still find that concepting major characters in T-pose (or
just standing there) to be challenging. When I feel stuck, it helps to put them
in context. This image explores Edi being more literally connected to the
Normandy.

These were early Reaper drone concepts that remain my
favorites to this day.

Some drawings for Jack’s updated look.

Protheans were interesting. At first I was trying to design
a creature that could conceivably be (if you squint your eyes) the genetic root
of all the alien races in our galaxy (yes yes, just like that TNG episode). I
was trying to stay as close to their original appearance in ME1 as I could (which
had been kept intentionally vague for just this reason). That didn’t last long
though.

Here I was trying to design a suit that was reminiscent of a Mass Relay.

Okay, admittedly, I’ve kept these drawings far away from the
internet for a while. That’s because they’re connected to controversy in one
way or another. Please take them as they are: drawings done during development,
posted for interest’s sake. I’ve been asked to comment on these subjects in the
past but will continue to let the work speak for itself.

These were some of the first images drawn for the finale
level. The original thought was to create a serene space in the middle of a
pitched battle. I thought it would be interesting to create this golden lotus
flower out of panels and protective foil.

Here are some sketches used to explore the different aspects
of your final decision.

This image was purely speculative on my part. I imagined the
galaxy changed by the synthesis choice. Because life and technology were joined
(and I didn’t know the Mass Relays would be destroyed yet) I imagined that
there would be no more need for space ships. Any creature could just link in
with the nearest relay and jump to any world they chose, surface to surface.
This would start changing the biology of every creature in the galaxy as they
would no longer be limited to any one environment. Here are some
Asari/Salarian/Human/? in the far, far future taking a carefree stroll in the
grass.

The debate about whether or not to reveal Tali’s face was
another one that lasted a long time. Versions of her were being worked on
fairly often. These were three that I thought worked in their own way.
Personally, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to push players to
the edge. Tali was like a pen pal, or a friend you’ve only ever known online.
Depending on how attached to her a player was, how well could they handle her
appearance challenging their expectations? If she looked a little too alien,
just a little too repellant, would they still feel the same way about her? Or
did her personality and your history together trump appearances? It’s an
interesting area to explore and I hope we can find other ways to ask that
question.

To
me,
this has always been (and always will be) Tali. This was drawn during ME1 when
she was first being designed, and when her appearance under the mask wasn’t a
big deal yet.

Dragon age

Here’s a nice segue image. I had just polished up the ME2
armor when we heard about the crossover armors.
It was never built, but I forget why. Maybe it was a little too Mass
Effect to fit into Dragon Age)

These were redesigns of Dragon Age Origins appearances. We
were trying to reshape or reuse as many existing assets as possible. These were
two attempts to strengthen the designs, making them more readable and
practical.

We did a lot of simple stuff like this, attempting to
address readability and the overall “final frame” of the game (Dragon Age 2 in
this case). This was obviously very early on in the levels development, but it
helped to establish the right ranges early on.

These were attempts to flesh out the city of Kirkwall
in Dragon Age 2. The first is a bare-bones “quarried city”. We wanted it to
look like much of the city had been carved straight out of the rock.

This shows Kirkwall’s slave prison as it would have appeared
in the past, under Tevinter rule.

Quick and dirty sketches like this helped out sort out some of the more
challenging architectural and sculptural elements. The central idea remained
the same in game (that a giant chain kept the entrance to Kirkwall defended),
but the slave driver/slave sculptures changed. And the chain was no longer
covered in gibbets, sadly.

Here is a very early attempt to redesign Flemeth for DA2. We
wanted her to be more imposing, letting more of her power show through. It was
decided that this was still too restrained.

Early sketches of some party members. These are
quickly sketched out as we read the character descriptions. It’s really nothing
more than a way of keeping notes on various features, affectations, or poses
that strike us.

Designing Merril was a great exercise in Writing and Concept
Art learning to speak one another’s language. In her early descriptions I
picked up heavily on her willful dabbling with blood magic. On paper she was
scary, so early drawings reflected that. After the writers understandably
freaked a little, it was explained how those more deadly aspects of her
curiosity would unfold and we reined her in a great deal.

Alternate versions of party members at different stages in their development. In order:

-Giving some Dalish armor to Merril

-Giving Fenris more armor and a better haircut
(we were to late…god help us, we were too late…)

-This was an early version of Isabela. Duncan’s
appearance is my favorite from DAO, so I wanted to try translating it directly.
A few pieces from this carried over to her final look.

-Carver didn’t change much. He has tan stripes on
his arms, which were a bizarre design idea and I couldn’t tell you why I
thought they’d work on him.

-This was my original costume design for Tallis.
It turns out she has a guy for that so her final appearance was different, but
that’s all part of the fun.

Fenris, Fenris, Fenris….The widowmaker. These barely
scratch the surface of how many attempts we made at Fenris. Somehow he was just
impossible to capture. He was like a game of musical chairs. His design kept changing
until the music stopped and the version we had was the version we had to live
with. I still would love to redesign him, but like him or not, Fenris is now
Fenris.

Fenris’ tattoos (you never see this much, but we needed
to know what they looked like under there)

Orsino and Meredith stood as opposing forces in DA2.
Meredith’s design was pretty much finalized, and she looked like a heroic
paladin (still one of my favorites from DA2). I took this opportunity to design
Orsino in contrast, making him look as much like a Disney villain as I could
get away with. I think it’s a nice contrast for his character too. He looks
like a vampire but is a pretty nice guy

.

This lineup was drawn as part of a visual development
project we tried. As a way of summing up all the design elements we wanted to
bring together we made a simple animatic, trying to capture a slice of the art
direction over all. These guys served as our temporary cast.

This was a hypothetical cast we used as part of an
internal design fundamentals discussion. The idea was to take a cast of
characters and design them together as a group. By doing this you start making
choices about major shapes, color themes, etc… This was a relatively simplistic
one, but it got the point across.

Early stages of Hawke’s evolution. Affectionately named
“Biker Mage”, our visual development guy
ended up being a launch pad for our protagonist.

I don’t have many of these lying around as they tend to be
deleted shortly after the fix has been made. I’m going to try to save more of
them since they’re a key element in the process. There are very few concepts that
get translated into 3D exactly as intended. You have to pick your battles, but
it’s quite often helpful to send a quick and dirty paintover.

Controversy again.

The Darkspawn redesign. Some people like them, some people
hate them so much it probably hints a serious underlying medical condition.
Here’s my thought process.

You only every know how to design your game when it’s done.
That’s just the reality. We’re fortunate on Dragon Age to have the freedom to
correct or finesse designs according to what we’ve learned in the past. At the
end of the day, Concept Art is about telling the story of the game and we felt
that the original design of the Darkspawn wasn’t doing the story justice.

Our goals were:

-We wanted to show that the Taint hadn’t just lead to
pointy-teeth monsters, but that it was a sickness affecting people who used to
be Human, Elven, Dwarven and Qunari.

-We wanted to show the brain-decay the disease caused by
making their armor far less sophisticated (The Origins Darkspawn armor was more
complex and intricate than most human armor)

-We wanted to show that it was the same disease effecting
all members of the Darkspawn (We felt the Darkspawn in Origins were a bit too
hodgepodge in their appearances)

This
was an early pass that went too far. We didn’t want to go full horror show on
it, but it acted as a starting point for the discussion. The strong reaction we
got internally showed us we were on to something. By making them more
recognizably human, it triggers your empathy more strongly.

Another aspect of the Darkspawn we considered was their roll
in combat. They could appear in almost any environment so we wanted to make
sure they were readable. The original design tended to blend into the
background too easily. So, we designed the sickness and armor to create a high
contrast design. The skin became pale and the armor was darkened. This way you
could always spot them, and animators wouldn’t have to fight as hard to
telegraph their attacks and movements.

Here are the design principles applied to the Hurlock and
the Ogre. Both a little closer to their races of origin (though we had more
restrictions with the Ogre), both following the same high contrast color scheme
and primitive aesthetic. That was the intent. Execution is something else. But
it’s all a learning experience and each step gets us a little further.

Concept art is a strange business. There’s all sorts of odd
jobs, rabbit trails, misfires and victories. As I said earlier, you never know
how to design a game until it’s finished. All we can do is keep running out
into the darkness, lighting torches until we find something good.

If you read this far, holy crap. Congratulations, here’s an
unused Qunari barbarian for your trouble.

81 comments:

Great stuff. I really enjoying seeing the evolution of design. I want to thank you for showing some of your rougher drawings and paintings. As an aspiring artist its nice to see the in between phases. Keep it up!

thank you very much for posting these images and taking the time to comment on them as well!I really wish more of these had made it into the art books - though I do wish that 'The Art of the Mass Effect Universe' was a 4 tome compilation (1 for each game and one for comics, the anime etc.) to begin with ;)and I cna only hope that we get a proper artbook for Dragon Age on top of the World of Thedas books.

I loved every piece of art and all the notes in this! I want to go into concept art/character development for a career, and everything I can find out about the job is extremely helpful, especially when it comes from people who work in the field.

Thank you so much for these beautiful works of art and for making all the characters I love!

I really enjoy your art and your vision. I think you're very talanted. Which is why it kinda sucks to see your female designs. You have these strong, amazing personalities and yet you dress them in skimpy clothing and armour that revelas what it should protect, and then you place them in these ridiculous contortionist poses. I see this over and over again, and as a woman and a person who really enjoys your games, I find that kind of hurtful. You have this huge part of your fanbase who are just waiting for you to do right by them.

Malin S Larsson, I hear you. My only explanation is that these were drawn when I was younger and very single. I'm excited to show off the concept art we've done for Dragon Age Inquisition. I have a feeling you'll be pleasantly surprised by the effect my strong, intelligent wife and beautiful little daughter have had on my portrayal of women. Taking part in the creation of quality female role models has become a priority for me over the last few years.

very inspiring post.I love to hear about the process behind some of these truly amazing characters. Great concept of the "real" Tali without mask!As always, great work keep it up.Might do a pants down post like this myself! :)

I’m Virak, a french illustrator, and I manage some Facebook fanpages with my friends from « Ultimate Chibi Team » (http://www.ultimatechibiteam.com/ ).We really like your work in Bioware games, and I wanted to know if we could make an interview of you for « Mass Effect France » (https://www.facebook.com/MASSEFFECTFRANCE ), and « Dragon Age France » (https://www.facebook.com/DragonAgeFrance ).Our people are very enthusiastic about the different works concerning those games, and they would be very happy to know more about you and your work.Let me know if you are ok or not.

Thank you Matt! I always love following your work but I am so happy to get to read so much detail about the internal concepting process at Bioware. I'm really glad they let you release these, so much neat stuff to see. It looks like there were a lot of battles, and it's hard to see good work disappear into the ether. Great post!

So amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of this! Finding this blog entry and all the cool illustrations and insight into the thinking process behind them... I feel like I just stumbled across the biggest stash of loot EVER.

Thanks so much for posting this stuff! It's interesting your thoughts about Tali's appearance. I bought the art of Mass Effect book not too long ago and I saw a small thumbnail of that particular design (your favorite one) for Tali and I thought the same thing. THAT'S Tali!

Amazing post - thank you so much for sharing! I wasn't expecting to see much that hadn't previously been shared in the art book, so I was floored at how much additional art you posted up. I really enjoy viewing concept work from films and games, especially seeing how characters and ideas come to life. Most inspiring. Thanks once again!

I gotta say, that last image of Tali that you said would always be Tali to you? That's exactly how I always imagined the Quarians, pale from generations living in bubble suits with slitted almond eyes. I think fans would have been perfectly happy with that. Appearance doesn't matter that much when you're dating an alien anyway (hence all the garrus mancers). Heck, anything is better than a stock photo.

Some of these designs are neat, and the art is technically good, but I hated the visual redesign of Dragon Age 2. The darkspawn look stupid, the elves look hideous and overall it just seems not only generic and washed-out, but also unnecessary. It seems like the reasons behind the design changes were for all the wrong reasons and, like the changes to the game itself, more about branching out to a new more mainstream audience than about appealing to fans. Especially when we have characters from DAO looking NOTHING like their original selves when there's no real call for it (for example, human characters).

Your art is, again, technically great. But BioWare have completely lost their way and seem to be making the wrong types of games these days for the wrong reasons. DA2 was a mess and ME3 barely an RPG any more, and both were a complete betrayal to everything the original games originally stood for.

And I have no interest in the next Mass Effect or DA3 or any other BioWare games while they continue to treat the fans that got them where they are today with such disdain for the sake of mainstream pandering and constantly retooling and retconning existing IPs for the sake of it. Perhaps when BioWare want to make proper RPGs again I'll come back, but while player agency, narrative freedom and deep mechanics are being neglected for cinematic flow, voiced protagonists with forced roles and linear, forced writing and an overall trend of "Action! Action! Action!" and oversimplification being the focus, I'll just stick to Obsidian, CDProjekt and the like. BioWare are dead to me now. You're a great artist who should work for a better company. A company like BioWare USED to be once.

I was going to leave a comment about my thoughts on your female characters' designs for DA2, but then I saw Malin S Larsson's comment and your response, which pretty much covers everything I wanted to say, and hear. So thanks for responding to that.

Hello,Thanks for the amazing post. Your work is amazing and a great inspiration.

I was curious if you could explain how you came to the original prothean design vs what became final? I find both kind of fascinating. PErsonally for some reason I felt like the vague statues could be a kind of "science" class of their species so I've always been fascinated by it.

Also I was wondering if there was a reason the more human reaper in ME2 was picked. It was a great design, but it always kind of seemed more monster and less alien and I wonder if that was intentional.

You sir are a star. I have been watching your art for god-know how many years now and I've always loved your character concepts. But mostly I love the all your sketchy messes and lovely line work that translates everything I need to know beautifully.

Great insight and great design, many thanks for the post. At this point it is amazing just to see anything new from mass effect - I wish some of these concepts had made it into the game (reaper Shepard, tali's face - your original alien design).

Thank you for sharing this lovely work! I personally thought the photo-manipulated version of Tali's face they finally went with was a very boring cop-out. This more intriguing alien appearance would have been far cooler. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HiTPkHxeoB4/Ue6kzB8whYI/AAAAAAAAA9M/aft4uVjbzf8/s200/Tali_01.jpg

I fully agree with you about the appearance of Tali. I love the latest concept and I hoped until the last that it was like that .. but I was a little disappointed..anyway, beautiful work! I thank you for these concepts, for the inspiration that you give me and for having contributed to the creation of Mass Effect

This artwork is amazing! Your creativity is nothing short of inspiring, and it's especially cool to see this as a Mass Effect fan! I can see how your concepts really helped to form one of my favorite games of all time!

Thank you for sharing this, and, especially, thank you for sharing the drawing of Tali! I really wanted to see what she looked like behind the mask, and this gave me some closure, if you could call it that!

Anyways, thanks again and good luck with all of your current and future work!

Okay, Tali with hair is now officially my virtual crush. I mean come on, she is just so lovely. I think that ME trilogy would be much better if some of those concept's weren't rejected. Those are just great.

Nice stuff. Loved the takes on Tali, can't say I saw her as any of those, but then again, I'm not sure WHAT I saw her looking like. Doesn't matter to me in the end. I dig smart chicks, so Shepherd would've...umm... you know...

What a marvelous collection of works you have here. Really strong characters and silhouettes, and your have just the right style to pull them in such great presentations, great job Matt.Are you going to be involved in any possible future Mass Effect stuff? Would love to see more of your sci-fi designs come to life ;)

So almost every issue I had with Mass Effect's and DA's Art design is addressed here... I'd really like to have a word with those who decided against these concept arts. I threw a hissy fit about Flemeth in DA2, I hated the sexbot EDI was, and all these things could've been so much better. If Mass Effect looked like those designs, much more out of there and alien, it'd be in my Hall of Fame of true art in gaming, but someone had to decide that it'd scare away too many players, apparently. Almost makes me cry to see what could've been... But thank you for showing these wonderful artworks, now we just need a complete overhaul mod for the games. :(

Another thank you for the fascinating piece - both the pictures and the explanation.

And can I use you to represent all concept artists in film, games, wherever, and say another thank you. I see many behind the scenes videos where they casually show some concepts which weren't used, and I always think of these talented people who must spend hours crafting these art works - many would look great in an art gallery - which are binned shortly afterwards.

It's good to see that so many buy the art books so not everything is wasted but all concept artists have my sympathy and thanks. Again.

thanks for sharing those awesome concepts with us. I'm a huge Mass Effect fan and it warms my heart to see these amazing concepts. Concepts always show a world for itself. In this case it's a world full of amazing characters and locations.

I especially like the concept of the bubble-head, it gives me many imaginations about a Darth Vader-like character. My idea on it was that the Illusive Man made him a computer-like individual after a serious incident. Imagine some holograms and tubes in the bubble connected to a machine mounted on his back. It would give a great character I suppose.

My other favorite is your concept of the Citadel room. In my opinion it fits perfectly well to Mass Effect and looks better than the one we see in the current game.

Comrade Matthew, I am sorry for disturbing you, but there is a question that bothers me very hard. I do not know, if you are the creator of Illusive Man"s chair, but I, at least, hope, that you are familiar to one. The question, that disturbs me so much, is how this chair rotates? To me, as I am able to see in the cutscenes, it is completely solid construction, with no rotating parts (even plates) beneath. I strongly and sincerely hope to hear the answer.

i like.... nice work ....but i am an artist too and i have an opinion on tali's face ... i always imagine her as a little Innocent strong girl ...and your concepts show her as a lady ... even her voice don't Match the look ....so i wonder if i can send or share my concepts ^_^

Impressive. Are you guys thinking of doing some publishing of this material? I find concept art as fascinating as the game itself, and your 'insider knowledge' (and that of your colleagues) would certainly make this an interesting book to read!

I really wish some of your previous concepts made it into the mass effect games. I feel that some final choices were poof your prothean armour and reaper drones just seemed to fit more properly in the ME universe. I dont know but i really enjoyed seeing the concept and eat couldve maybe even should have been, keep up the good work!

I am curious in the Dragon age section in the picture of the drawings you did based on the descriptions are those from left to right Fenris ,Merril , Bethany, Varrick, Anders,Carver,Isabela, and Aveline?

I started to dive in to this topic all-around 2003, and got distressing experiences back then, squandering a lot of time for nothing. I stopped when I did not fully grasp much about it having myself buried inside other things. Now I am back again. Your blog post is a great motivation to me and I will probably let my granddad know about this.

Matt, been following you & a lot of other Concept artists for a long time & just have to say, you & Feng are my Concept Art heroes.

I love your stuff.I mean part of the reason I even love the visual style of D.A.II so much is because the actual in-game look of the models & environments almost mirrored the amazing art you did for the game.

Keep up the great work man, I wish you all the best.& looking forward to when Inquisition comes out so I can get the art-book & add it to my collection of your stuff

This is great. Love the goofiness of those villains. Such a great idea to put heroes in a position where they laugh and then fear.I also liked the human-fetus concept.I'd love to hear what you like and dislike about the different genres of sci-fi and fantasy design.

The Mass Effect concept art is amazing it takes me forever to come up with artistic work for my story it must help having a few people, on the team to brain storm different ideas I think it’s pretty amazing that the human mind can come up with almost anything. It really inspires me to see fresh and creative art work that stands out form most people’s ideas. I really like the concept art for the Illusive Man is amazing after he is overdosed with reaper technologies. I was curious if anyone know the Illusive Man’s real name it has always eluded me?

Hi Matt,Thank you very much! I only look on the ME ones since I only like ME... I can say that more than half of these are inferior from final design and there are like 1/3 of these that looks crappy.. like I don't like the shadowbroker concepts but here I got your message: the process to find perfection involve a thousands of sacrifice...Also I am female and I don't feel offended with the art of Mass Effect. What so wrong with sexy women? I am pretty sure that females on Bioware have put theirs input. A bit cringe on Jack's style but that is because I'm just don't feel related on gangster-like characters (even tho I nod and understand her when she expose her stories).

Thank you for showing us what concept art _really_ is like. It's very helpful to aspiring concept artists who are trying to do work that are more aligned to what is really in need to break into the industry. Thank you so much again! I read everything to the end.